Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1887-10-08

work, and he has evolved from twenty-five
groups of five letters each, the large letters
being translated into E and the small into
A, the sentence, Fra Ba wrt ear ay" or
"Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays"
He holds, therefore, that Bacon wrote the
epitaph, for cipher is used he devised
and that was not published until long after
the eritaph was chiseled. He believes
that Shakespeare consented to cipher
secresY and to the preparation of the
doggerel for his tablet, and that he in
structed the stone-mason how to cut it.
This ingenious evolution of apparent
proofs would alone be sufficiently interest
ing; but the curiosity is more whetted
and the mind still more enter
tanned by commentary by Ed
ward Gordon Clark, whose remarkable
paper supplements that of Black, and is
a literary curiosity of peculiar order,
and is certain to provoke as much, if not
more criticism than the more laborious
and less satisfactory work of Donnelly.
Clark took up Blacks theory for study by
request of the editor of the Reuier, and he
confessess that he engaged in it with no
idea of what it was to lead up to, and that
for his unexpected and startling con-
clusions reached, none but he should be
held accountable.
Working upon the epitaph in the di-
rection given by Black, Clark discovers the
whole literary history of Shakespeare in
the four lines, Bacon's relations with him,
and the key to the entire story ofthe writ
ing of the plays, and why, as he claims, Ba-
con wrote them and concealed the fact.
He improves upon Blacks conjecture con-
corning the dash, Or hyphen, and he thus
finds the cipher almost exhaustless in its
revelations. We cannot enter into the
elaborate details of his discoveries" they
involve too much tabular and diagram
work for these columns. Suffice it to say,
Clark draws from the four lines Of doggerel
such sentences as these: "Francis Bacon
wrote Shakespeare's plays aye-Shax-
PEREZ" "Francis Bacon wrote Here: Aye
Aye !-Shaxpere" Francis Bacon wrote
here his cue : Aye, ayeW "Aye Francis
Bacon writ here as Shaxpere. "Shax-
pere. Bacon was He.-F. Bag. Francis
Bacon did" "Francis Bacon hid"
Bacon Raised Deceased William"
" Bacon aided, equipped, William"
Treating the T on the Y anew, he
finds the logograph to be either
large letter, or four small ones. Turned
upon its side it is an H. The foot OF it
crosses the Y and makes an A, and the
lower part Of the Y by the cross OF its own
base becomes another T, and thus the
whole becomes " that" in one large letter,
and SO can be used as five biliteral signs,
giving eight new counters. From this new
starting point Clark proceeds anew and
draws from the mysterious epitaph state
ments concerning Bacon and his career and
his standing in his day; and these other
statements: Bacon will narrate all Shakes
peare here" Jacques Pierre is all mar
rated here: Aye, | obey This wishes -
Bacon"
Mr.. Clark's method is so rapid, SO inge-
NOUS and trenchant that it is fairly be-
wildering. 1t is at once SO witty and in
volved, that the temptation is strong to
receive the whole thing as satire upon
the Shakespeare-Baco question. He, how
ever, declares that he took up the work as
literary expert, careless as to who wrote
Shakespeare's plays, since he had no time
to give to that question. He insists that
he has labored honestly, and starting in
not Baconian, came out Of the work con-
WINGED of Blacks soundness in the conclu-
sion he reaches. In fact, he claims to have
discovered so much by multitude of
transpositions of letters, and translations of
hidden meanings, backward and forward
reading of words and lines, and division
and subdivision of groups of letters and
words, that he is quite prepared to an
nounce a new work, and tempted to
to prepare "The Anagramatic Biography
of William Shakespeare: by Francis
Bacon" which has lain unpublished about
two hundred and seventy years.
The literary curiosity which these
papers of Black and Clark constitute may
not convince the reader, as they have
not us, that William Shakespeare did not
write the plays attributed to him, but
they will not fail to interest and entertain
any intelligent person. 1t would doubt
less be possible to so comfort the phases of
the letter groups of the epitaph as to
translate from them quite any matter the
adroit cryptographist desired.